FinTech Pulse

It was a pleasure to take part in Finovate Spring this year in sunny San Jose, and have the opportunity to meet and catch up with all the new and existing players on the FinTech circuit. Two full days of demos, lunches and networking opportunities, to share ideas and stay abreast of the latest concepts and innovations.

Of all the presentations I attended, two sparked my interest the most: Unison and Alpharank.

The rise of financial technology, or FinTech, has been one of the most exciting developments of recent years. Firms such as Transferwise, Kantox, Monzo and iZettle have proved that tech startups are capable of offering individuals and SMEs quicker, cheaper and more convenient financial services than traditional banks.

Machine learning has had fruitful applications in finance well before the advent of mobile banking apps, proficient chat bots, or search engines. Given high volume, accurate historical records, and quantitative nature of the finance world, few industries are better suited for artificial intelligence. There are more uses cases of machine learning in finance than ever before, a trend perpetuated by more accessible computing power and more accessible machine learning tools (such as Google’s Tensorflow).

UBIQUIBOTS: AI FOR BANKS

Bots (and articles about bots - oops!) are popping up everywhere these days.

Indeed, very few concepts have shot up the hype curve so fast, especially considering that the idea of conversational UI has been with us for a long time in various forms and under different denominations. It looks like a jungle, but all bots are essentially doing the same thing: adding conversational capabilities to FAQ and search.

You can read a good evolution and state of the art here and here. Personally, I had the pleasure of working for two companies that developed their own virtual assistant (basically a chatbot with a cute face). You might remember Anna, IKEA's robo-assistant - just one of a fairly comprehensive chatbot database here - although all kind of them have somewhat faded away now without significantly transforming our lives.

So, could it be different now that the worlds of bots and banking are colliding?